StoryGnat #27: Edgar, Aldred and Ragna
(Ragna's the best)
Hellooooo StoryGnatter,
How was your Easter break? I’m assuming you managed some time off, and I’m hoping it was a welcome reset.
StoryGnat is all about sharing stories that give us a different perspective. Often, those are true, historical stories. Today, we’re looking at a novel - one that’s entirely fictional (although thoroughly researched, I’m sure).
If you know Ken Follett’s novels, you’ll know they’re big, chunky and historical. Often, they come in trilogies (Pillars of the Earth, I’m looking at you).
The one I want to talk about today, though, is a prequel to one of his most famous works.
The Evening and The Morning
The Evening and the Morning is set well before the Kingsbridge trilogy (of which the Pillars of the Earth is the first book). It’s set in the same geographical location, but it takes us back to Anglo-Saxon times, following the likes of Edgar (a young shipbuilder), Aldred (a young monk) and Ragna (a young Norman noblewoman).
What makes it so special (to me), is how vividly it brings that period to life.
It’s an era I’ve always struggled to properly picture in my mind. But, like any good author, Follett imagines his characters so clearly that they pop right into our heads, while working within the confines of what we do know about society at the time.
One section that stuck with me particularly strongly follows a small family moving to a new hamlet. As they set up their smallholding, they have to borrow a piece of twine from a neighbour. That simple piece of twine is seen as an incredibly valuable possession – one the neighbour will want back.
I think this took up residence in my head because we take small things like that so hugely for granted today. It’s like a shorthand for shifting into the perspective of a less cluttered time.
As a history graduate, I also love the way he reminds us that the Normans were, in essence, Vikings who’d settled along the coast of France (Normans being North men). That’s a dimension of history that’s often lost in our school teaching here in the UK, but it’s so important in understanding how everything at that time fitted together.
Anyway, if you want to really immerse yourself in what Anglo-Saxon life could have been like (we’ll never really know for sure), I highly recommend it. And it’s a stonking good yarn, too.
Once again, next weekend is a bank holiday weekend, which means no StoryGnat (but hopefully some sunshine). I’ll be back again the week after, with stories anew.
Until then,
Meg